Tim: Kevin’s still jumping back and forth being being a singer and professional footballer; here’s his first track since his 2015 Christmas one, and boy is it jaunty.
Tom: Here’s a complaint I’ve never, ever made before here: I despise the rhyme scheme of this song. I don’t know why, but that “all / wall / tall” just grated in the first verse and I could never let it go after that. This is a really petty complaint, I know, because like you say, the rest of this is pleasantly jaunty.
Tim: Okay, Tom: you often mention your Good Pop Song tests – do you immediately want to press play again, can you remember the chorus afterwards – and they’ve kind of buried their way into my head as well now. And with this one, I was ‘yes, but no’.
Tom: The exact opposite for me: I didn’t want to press play again, but I could remember that damn chorus.
Tim: Except, half an hour later, i had a tune going round in my head, and I couldn’t place it, until I realised it was this one. So does that count? Because I do absolutely want to keep pressing play here – the melody is great, decent enough lyrics, and all in all it just makes me feel good. Happy, in fact.
I think that’s because there are a lot of familiar components in there – nothing copied, but things like the layered vocals, the call and return in the middle eight – going together to make a song that’s basically just reassuringly enjoyable.
Tom: I’ll grant you that my heart did soften a bit for that final chorus. He needs to go to a harmony line (or perhaps even just up an octave) on that last note, though.